Lord Westbury did not look relieved.
He looked at Alice.
In her whole life, despite every small or large transgression, her father had never looked at her with the particular attention with which he was looking at her now. It was not anger. It was something more careful. It was the look he wore at the dinner table when he was cataloging a thing he intended to use later.
“Father—”
“Alice.”
“Father, the Duke was?—”
“The Duke was,” Cassian cut in, stepping slightly between them, “in the process of inviting your daughter to a house party at Langton next week. My sister has been planning it for some time. At the end of the week, with your permission, our wedding will take place. I have secured a special license.”
The room went very still.
Alice turned her head slowly. She turned it because she had only heard what Cassian had said at that moment and because what he had said could not, on any reasonable hearing of it, be what he had meant to say.
“A special license?” her father asked mildly.
“Yes, My Lord.”
“And you are to be married at the end of the week.”
“Yes.”
“We agreed on three weeks, Your Grace.”
“That was before.”
Cassian did not glance at Alice as he said it. He did not need to. His thumb moved briefly, almost imperceptibly, against the edge of his coat sleeve in the small repetitive motion Alice had begun to recognize as the thing he did with his hand when he was very deliberately not doing something with it.
Lord Westbury gave a slow nod. “Very well, Your Grace. I shall not pretend to be sorry. Three weeks is a great deal of time to fill with banns when the matter is already settled, and a special license is, I daresay, the more discreet course. We shall await your sister’s invitation.”
“My Lord.”
“I shall leave you with my daughters. Daphne, set down the tray.”
Daphne set down the tray.
Lord Westbury bowed very correctly to Cassian. He turned very correctly on his heel. He walked very correctly out of the morning room, the door closing behind him with a small, precise click. He had said exactly what he wished to be heard saying, and he meant to be heard not saying the rest.
Daphne did not move.
For what felt like several seconds, Alice did not move either. She did not look at Cassian. She did not dare to look at him. In fact, she did not trust herself to speak in front of her sister, who was looking between them with an expression Alice had not paid enough attention to in the corridor.
“Daphne,” Alice said quietly, “please, will you give me a quarter of an hour with His Grace?”
“Alice—”
“Please, Daphne.”
Daphne looked at her. She looked at her for the small, careful length of time that meant Daphne, who had been Alice’s sister for twenty years, had decided to allow a thing she did not entirely understand.
She nodded and left.
She closed the door behind her. She did not close it entirely, which Alice noted with a small gratitude because two inches of space was in the orangery and in the morning room and in every room in her parents’ house, the precise margin between Daphne being a sister and Daphne being a chaperone. And Daphne, in being kind, was being neither.
Alice turned to Cassian. “Your Grace.”
